Hey, everyone. Anthony Fantano here, the Internet's busiest music nerd. I hope you're doing well. 💋 Gave you a big old kissy there. A real kissy, not an artificial kissy.

If it were artificial, you would be very, very understandably angry. Just like a lot of fans seem to be repeatedly angry when they see some of their favorite artists and musicians on the Internet fronting their new album covers with subpar and ugly-looking AI art. Despite the very wide availability of all sorts of art and creativity across the internet because platforms like Instagram are literally a treasure trove of artists posting their art on there all day, every day. You could probably get somebody to make some sick cover art for you on Fiverr, for Christ's sake.

Yeah, rather than doing all of that, a lot of people these days would much rather punch a few words into an interface and just put whatever piece of crap comes out onto their next album, which is quite unfortunate, again, for the reasons I just stated in terms of artists who really deserve a chance not getting one. The cover art that we're getting from these AI interfaces is not even that good.

The latest example here on the chopping block being the album art from the upcoming Tears for Fears album, Songs for a Nervous Planet. Yes, the classic groundbreaking, hit making English pop rock and synth pop duo. They went with some AI art for the cover.

We have an astronaut here with a chrome visor on his mask or something that has a very heavy reflection to it. And he's standing in a field of sunflowers. Whoops. Just presumed the astronaut's gender. Didn't mean that. Apologies. I really don't know anything about this astronaut. They could be anyone. There could even be literally nobody in that astronaut suit at all because surrealism.

Why are there two circles underneath the camera box lens on the astronaut's chest that have the sunflower leaves growing and wrapping around it? That doesn't make sense. Are those the astronaut's super low cybernipples and the sunflowers are wrapping around the cybernipples? Yes, the art is very sensual in that way. It's all about a man-plant hybrid love. And then also observe the weird cloud pattern going on in the background where it looks like The astronaut has three cloud chodes floating behind their head.

This art is weird and unflattering. I guess this unhappiness reached a fever pitch, which the band could no longer ignore. And they decided to drop a very odd non-response statement that reads like somebody copied and pasted an explanation for where the art came from off of a Wikipedia page.

If you just read this statement out of context without me telling you anything in regards to this story beforehand, you would probably presume, Are people even mad about this? Is this in reaction to people being upset? Again, it reads as a very non-statement that doesn't really acknowledge much of anything, but just further explains the stuff about the art people don't like. So how the band saw this as a potential solution to this uproar, I don't. Here the statement goes:

The cover of our new album, Songs for a Nervous Planet, was envisioned in collaboration with artist, Vitali Burcovischi, also known as @surrealistly. God, why does every like, shitty tech app or platform or idea have to have one of two kinds of names? It's either a word and all the vowels are removed, or it's just a word and it has L-Y at the end. As if doing either of those things makes your predatory and gross products seem quirky, and friendly, and cool, and chill.

This post seemingly was also posted in tandem with the Surrealistly Instagram page, where I guess you could see the original image source on a laptop of the album art with what I presume is probably more AI art in the background, which is also fucking horrible.

What is this? Is this a bird pecking at a woman's nose from the bottom half of her face? That looks like it's turning into a bridge or a castle or some shit. It's no Matisse. I'll say that.

Okay, the Songs for a Nervous Planet album artwork is a mixed media digital collage, with AI being just one of the many tools used in the creative process, which I see how that statement minimizes AI's involvement and inclusion in this whole thing visually. But the art still looks like tons of other crappy AI art that we've seen on the Internet over and over and over. I doubt that AI's involvement in this process was less than 50%.

We had the art pretty much done, and then we just used a little bit of AI as a treat just to just jazz it up a bit. We wanted vibrant artwork that evoked a sense of sci-fi, futuristic themes, and an escape from what is known, which, fair, okay, you can want that, but what about that necessitates that you use AI art? I mean, nothing. Like, oh, yeah, we wanted all this stuff, and there's no way it could have been achieved if we didn't use AI, guys.

Come on, give us a break. 'We wanted to achieve these things. The sunflowers are a joyful nod to classic Tears for Fear's imagery.' Okay, classic Tears for Fears imagery? What are you talking about? Seeds of Love album cover, where the sunflowers are just there for a little bit. While the juxtaposition of the Astronaut is a link to our upcoming song, "Astronaut".

"We have been fans of Surrealistly's work for a long time and knew he would be the perfect artist to bring our vision to life."

Which, again, just further shows who exactly the market for a lot of AI art is and AI images. You guys have been a fan of this guy's work for a long time. Where exactly were you seeing it? In your Facebook feed?

Yeah, all this art looks like something your Pep-Pep would send to you over email after he saw it in his Twitter feed, the account over there that he pays for.

"Collaborating with the band to bring their vision to life has been an incredible experience. Balancing surrealism with the emotional depth of their music was a challenge I fully embraced, and I believe the final artwork captures the powerful essence of their story."

What story? What essence? What is powerful about it? Why does all of these words say nothing? This is like the most PR statement ever PR statement since the invention of PR statements. The fucking statement itself reads like it was AI generated, which I mean, at this point, who knows? Because it does not feel like a human conceived this and took other humans' feelings into account when it was written.

There you go. Another disappointing use and acknowledgement of AI art from some pretty notable artists. Let me know your thoughts on all this Hullabaloo.

Anthony Fantano. Tears for Fears. Forever.